Advantages of business continuity planning

Unpredictable events happen regularly. From natural disasters to wilful and accidental damage, potential business crises can significantly disrupt your operations. This is especially true if you don't prepare to deal with emergencies.

This is where business continuity planning comes into play. As part of your recovery strategy, it allows you to prepare in advance the processes and procedures to help you cope with the unexpected. Planning can also help you realise many other important benefits.

Key benefits of business continuity planning

Business continuity planning can help you:

keep your business trading during and after an incident

recover operations more quickly after interruptions

reduce costs and duration of any disruption

mitigate risks and financial exposure

build customer confidence and trust

safeguard company reputation

develop confidence within the business

comply with regulatory or legal requirements

insure against otherwise unacceptable risks

save lives, if dangerous events (such as fire) occur

If you don't have a business continuity plan in place, start by carrying out a business crisis risk assessment[1]. This assessment will help you to understand your business - including assets, people and processes that are critical to run it - and the likelihood and potential impact of potential business crises[2].

Why have a business continuity plan?

A carefully thought-out business continuity plan will make coping in a crisis easier. It will also enable you to minimise disruption to your business and customers, often at the expense of competitors. It is a way of proving to customers, insurers and investors that your business is robust enough to cope with anything that might occur.

Importance of business continuity planning

Failure to plan could be disastrous for any business. At best, you risk losing customers while you're getting your business back on its feet. At worst, your business may never recover and may ultimately cease trading.

A clear, comprehensive business continuity plan will give you the best chances of overcoming a business disaster. Once you create a plan, remember to test it rigorously - you will want to make sure that it fulfils its purpose. Find out how to test your business continuity plan[4].